


the first and last of clan lavellan

by rievu



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, abt the "bad" ending for clan lavellan i guess, an ancient thing i dug out of my pile of rough drafts, but also a different ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: "Leliana tucks away the missive that details the burning of Wycome into a desk drawer with her brows knitted together. The few survivors tell a tale of a demon inhabiting a dead elf’s body who razed the city to the ground with her bare hands. She knows better than to assume, but then again, Leliana’s instincts have rarely failed her."// a slightly different twist on the "bad" ending for clan lavellan





	the first and last of clan lavellan

Ellana wants to tell Blackwall to stop worrying. After all, she loves Skyhold, and Skyhold loves her too. She knows it, as much as it is willing to give, and the castle in the seemingly endless sky knows her as well. It won’t let her die, so that is why she is comfortably sitting on top of the stable roof with Cole as she nibbles on a freshly-baked bun. Ellana already tried to offer Cole a bun as well, but he had refused, saying that the bun would go on to greater things, to comfort, to warmth.

However, Blackwall, bless his heart, continues to plead with her. Finally, she uncurls her tightly-crossed legs and springs off the roof. The ground seems to rise up and catch her softly, carefully, and she stands on the ground unharmed. Blackwall pinches the skin near his temples and mutters something about elves and their propensity to make other people’s hearts stop beating.

“I’m sorry, Blackwall, but I’m perfectly safe,” she tries.

He glances up and pats her on the head. “I’m grateful for that, my lady, but please don’t go jumping off the stable roof again,” he sighs. She nods, and he exhales heavily once more before he turns to walk back into the stables and back to his newest wood-carving project.

She wonders if she should go and see what Solas is up to, and then, she remembers that she was going to visit Leliana’s ravens today, and _then_ , with a heaving sigh, she remembers the seemingly infinite stack of letters and documents that require her personal attention on her desk in her quarters. She takes a single step forward, but then, the cawing of a raven catches her attention. With blinding hope, her steps turn into a sprint, and she runs up to Leliana’s tower. She knows that it may just be another report from a scouting operation or perhaps, another one of Leliana’s scouts sending in an account of their missions, but _still_ , with that same blinding hope rising up in her heart, she runs.

News of her clan. That is all she wants.

She wants, _needs_ , to know if Leliana’s assassins succeeded. If her clan is out of Wycome, safe and sound. If her Keeper is alright. If her brother — her last remnant of a family shattered by Templars — is alive. She needs it more than anything than she ever knew.

Ellana opens the door haphazardly, and Solas looks up with a startled and bemused look on his face which melts away when he sees her face. He stands up and calls out to her, but she pays him no heed and only rushes up the stairs. Faster, faster, step by step, everything seems to fade away. She’s already on the second floor in a matter of minutes, and Dorian sets down his book and opens his mouth to speak. Again, she pushes past him and runs even faster. She cannot wait. She _must_ run faster.

So she runs, fleet of foot like the halla, like the aravels that sailed over the fields she knew as a child, and silently like the hares she used to catch. Cole flickers into sight, called by the sound of her beating heart and the soaring sensation of _hope_ that flares into life and into being on her very skin.

Finally, she reaches the top of the tower, and Leliana drops the parchment she was holding, startled. It is unlike Leliana to even be startled by the likes of her, and she blinks. “Inquisitor Lavellan,” Leliana says, her tone utterly cool.

“Her voice shakes at the edge,” Cole whispers, seemingly intangible yet still here in reality all the same.

“Is there news?” Ellana asks, breath ragged and voice cracking on the last word. That is unlike Ellana as well. She can hear Dorian and Solas arrive behind her with their heavy footsteps, but all she can see is Leliana’s eyes close. Moments pass by, one, two, three. _Sa, ta, tan, like the way I used to count pebbles by the campfire with Mahanon,_ Ellana thinks with alarming swiftness. _Oh, Mythal, Falon’Din, please, sathan, please,_ she silently pleads.

Leliana wordlessly passes her the parchment, and looking closer, Lavellan can see the scorched edges and the small blood stains left on the parchment. Her heart sinks, and she feels that once-radiant hope begin to die slowly on her skin.

 

 

 

> _Da'len,_
> 
> _I know not whether this will reach you. The Duke of Wycome is dead, and the soldiers of Wycome blame us. All the elves in the city have been killed, blamed for some plague that only strikes down humans. Now they hunt us as well._
> 
> _Most of the clan is already dead._
> 
> _Live well, da'len. You carry Clan Lavellan with you. They are coming for us._

 

 

The message ends abruptly, but is written in the hand of Keeper Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan. Her Keeper. Her grandmother.

She wants to scream. She wants to kill. She wants to summon flame, hotter than the hate that rises up in her throat like bile, and burn Wycome to the ground. The hope dies on her skin and withers away into a thorned hatred — a brambled vengeance — that stirs in her blood and flickers on her tongue.

She cannot face Leliana like this. She cannot bear to see the pity that laces the spymaster’s lips, and so she turns and prepares to run once more. But no, her way out is blocked by Solas and Dorian who look at her with concern. Oh, she loves them, but she cannot face them. Not like this, not while the hatred is seeping into her bones and marrow. Instead, she stalks forward, her eyes lidded and dark, and flings herself out of the tower window. She can hear the cries of her friends and feel Leliana’s hand brush her back, but it is too late. Skyhold rises up to meet her, and she lands safely on the ground. But for once, she wishes that it wasn’t so.

She exchanges no words as she strides to the stables. She is quiet as she lets out a stag from its stable. Not even Cole breaks her silence, and she does not respond to Blackwall who calls out a question that is left unanswered. She creeps out, dons on a cloak of pure Fade, and steps out past the walls that protect Skyhold. The castle seems to creak as she leaves its premises, and the faithful stag follows. Without hesitation, she swings herself up and rides hard and fast, beyond the sights of scouts and the reach of ravens, to the sea and the fields of her home that wait beyond.

She loses her name as she travels. It is easier to be a nameless knife-ear among the crowds at the docks. She steals a scrap of cloth to bind her left hand, and her simple clothes that she was wearing when she left Skyhold are enough to keep her out of notice and nearly out of sight. She leaves her stag behind to make its own way back to Skyhold or to the wilderness beyond once she reaches the towns that line the shore.

The only thing that she can think, that she can process, is the fact that she is of Clan Lavellan, that she is First, that she failed to be there for her clan when they needed her most. She regrets until it becomes a dark, bitter thing that lives inside her chest and claws at her skin from the inside-out.

The rocking of the boat is familiar to her as she crosses the Waking Sea. She remembers when she was still a bone-thin thing of wood and grass, huddled next to a barrel beneath the deck and trying to ignore the prying eyes of other passengers on the boat. She paid her way onboard by summoning shoals of fish to the surface of the sea with a hand of dazzling light. The captain ushered her on deck without another word. She missed her brother sorely during those days, and she remembers begging her Keeper to let Mahanon go with her. Now, she clutches her hand that throbs with a green light that is nothing like the handful of sunshine she held that day with trepidation heavy in her heart. Now, her heart is only occupied by that bitter-dark thing of regret.

Ellana, no, it is Lavellan now. Lavellan dons on her familiar cloak of Fade and slips past the crowd. She pulls out a bag of gold that always seem to be lying around her room and stares at them. She doesn’t know, doesn’t remember exactly how the shemlen use them. How many coppers equal a silver? She doesn’t know, but she knows the way that halla breathe and chuff and run. She leaves a handful of coins where the horse used to stand and hoists herself up on his back. He nickers gently, and she whispers softly, _“Ma’falon, isala ghilan.”_ Before they leave, she takes a cloak as well and draws up the hood far up on her face to hide the knife-sharp ears that give her away too easily in the distance.

The horse understands and takes her as far as she can go. They stop every night, and Lavellan runs her fingers over his coat. She apologizes for not having a proper brush like Master Dennet keeps for his horses, but he only noses her neck and nickers almost reassuringly. With every step, she feels as though she is sloughing off the skin of Inquisitor into something that is Lavellan and elvhen and something that is _off_. It is reassuring and devastating. She is not the same as she was before, and it is an irrevocable change.

She knows she’s at the right place when she hears the spirits of the Fade screaming in the voices of her clanmates against the thin boundary between dream and reality. Lavellan dismounts and scans the horizon with a practiced eye. She has hunted on these plains before. Beyond the grasses and sedges lies the city of Wycome, seemingly innocent as it stands against the fading light of day. Grey surges up in the sky as twilight settles across the land, and it is under that same grey that Lavellan enters the city with her hood drawn up tight.

She can sense the red lyrium, throbbing, twisting, seething, as she enters the shemlen city. Elven faces are devoid from the crowd, and she has to sidestep into shadowed alleys to keep the moonlight and flickering lamplight off her face. Lavellan wraps the Fade tighter around her body as she creeps through the crowd. Sickened and dead bodies line the streets, and emergency clinics have been set up around street corners. Humans shuffle around in shifts as they struggle to revive the plague-stricken denizens of this abhorrent city. Lavellan pads over to examine the source of the throbbing sensation that stabs pain through her left palm, and her suspicions are correct.

There is red lyrium within the wells.

Disgust rises up like bile at the back of her throat, and she turns her back on the wells. She has seen enough of the shemlen for one night.

With a shake of her head, she makes her way down the winding streets to where the buildings cease to be clean-cut stone and careful latticing. The buildings turn into leaning, wooden-plank hovels and rickety buildings that look frail and flimsy. This is the alienage, and blessedly, the red lyrium is not here. However, the bodies remain.

Some are tattooed with the marks of her gods, and some are bare-faced but still tragic in their deaths. Lavellan unwraps the Fade from her skin, and the moonlight illuminates the tears silently streaming down her marked cheeks. In a high, reedy, grief-stricken voice, she sings out the funeral dirge, calling upon Falon’Din to guide the souls of the dead safely to the Beyond. She reaches out her hands to shut eyes and to re-arrange cold limbs back into a more peaceful position. She promises to carve their funeral oak staffs and plant trees in the earth for them so that life is breathed back into the world that gave them life first.

Then, she sees the twisted, bloodied body of the one she called brother, lethallin, _Mahanon_ . Her last, precious remnant of the family she lost to templars. His ironbark armor is battered and scratched, and rust-red stains of spilled blood remain on it. However, his face is _(was)_ still the same. Lavellan sinks to her knees, her voice giving out in an almost inhuman cry of grief. Her voice rings out shrill and clear in the empty streets, and she cries, tears streaking her cheeks. She does not bother to wipe away her tears for there is no shame in this grief. She wants and wishes and yearns and _begs_ , but no matter how many times the word “please” spills from her lips, Mahanon’s eyes do not open again. His body remains cold on the cobblestoned street. She curls over his body, lamenting everything that came to be and pass between their parting.

Time seems to be immaterial. Once her sobs subside into aching, heaving breaths that shake her chest and ribs, she gets up once more. She does not bother to hide herself nor her ears. Her eyes are cold and flinty as she strides back out to the center of the city where the plague-ridden bodies still stretch up and twitch their red lyrium-tainted limbs.

Lavellan bears no pity for the city who murdered every elf in this city for a plague that they did not cause. She hungers for this vengeance and thirsts for blood in order to compensate for the blood that she lost.

No one sees her as she makes her way up to the first well. But, they notice her when her hand erupts into flame, white-hot with hatred and vengeance. She flares out her fingers, and tongues of fire reach out to consume the well and the red lyrium crystal lying within. The fire consumes and devours quickly, and it unnaturally spreads to cobblestones and dead bodies and torn sheets and bandages. Lavellan turns, and every shemlen watching freezes at the sight of her.

Her eyes are wild, her hair is flying everywhere behind her, and the flames outline her body and the vallaslin that curls around her eyes against the stark black of night. Her mana catches on the clean-cut edges of her vallaslin and spark into light. It threads across her skin in the same shape of her vallaslin: the branches of Mythal. The All-Mother is the goddess of kind protection, but Lavellan also knows that the All-Mother can be fierce when dispensing justice. That self-righteous anger sears itself into her memory, and the flames outlining her become white-hot. In this moment, she appears to be the very image of the Dalish who raid cities and steal children on their backs. In that moment, she feels as though she has become that bitter-dark beast incarnate.

She is the First and now, the Last of Clan Lavellan, and she will pay retribution for every clanmate in return.

 

* * *

   
  


Lavellan returns to Skyhold with a placid, almost sleepy, expression on her face as she rides astride a dusky brown horse that the stable-hands have never seen her ride before. She wears different clothes than what she wore when she left, but she returns to her daily life as Inquisitor. In fact, her return is so seamless that it almost seems as though she never left.

When Krem beckons her in for a drink by calling out “Ellana!” at the door of the Herald’s Rest, she comes. However, she lays a finger on his lips and tilts her head to the side. “Lavellan,” she says simply before walking in and plopping on top of one of the tavern stools. The Iron Bull claps her on the back as per usual, but that lone word shifts the dynamics of what used to be the gentle, innocent doe of an elf-girl that stumbled into Haven once upon a time.

Inquisitor Lavellan is still known for her cheery smiles and charmingly quaint ways, but she carries herself with a certain kind of dignity and a certain kind of iron beneath her words. Some diplomats that come to see her claim that the iron was there before but only barely seen. Now, that veneer cracks and splinters, and Inquisitor Lavellan strikes forth with her war with Corypheus with a deadly determination. She is still the darling of Skyhold, but a shadow still lays across her that was not there before.

Meanwhile, Leliana tucks away the missive that details the burning of Wycome into a desk drawer with her brows knitted together. The few survivors tell a tale of a demon inhabiting a dead elf’s body who razed the city to the ground with her bare hands. She knows better than to assume, but then again, Leliana’s instincts have rarely failed her.

**Author's Note:**

> translations  
>  **sa, ta, tan** : one, two, three  
>  **ma'falon, isala ghilan** : my friend, i need your help
> 
> i found this lil thing in a pile of my old rough drafts, and i decided that i might as well post it. i was never rly satisfied with this ending in game?? like, you get the letter after the war table mission, and that's pretty much about it in terms of emotional damage. so yeah, this is like,,, the Worst Ending for lavellan, i guess? anyhow, thanks for reading! lmk what your thoughts on this piece / clan lavellan are!! <3


End file.
